Data centre industry makeover

EUDCA founding member and Cassini partner Jahri Stefan Norberg went along to the Paris launch last week to find out why five EU industry bodies joined forces to focus on data centre industry development. Cross border endeavours carry special risk, and when you add five industry bodies into the mix, driving commercially relevant outcomes can be challenging.

Encouragingly, the launch meeting was able to make progress and agree on objectives and a set of launch related initiatives. The initial focus will be to:

Raise the industry profile of data centres

Share knowledge and information over the country-borders

Grow towards an industry collective

A number of projects were evaluated and we like the following:

Knowledge exchange – The DDA has just released a report on “Dutch Data Centre Report 2015” and another one on “Green IT.” These are initiatives that can be partially used in other regions for similar initiatives. ECO has also recently released a report on the next year’s internet market. The opportunity to formalise cross-border knowledge sharing, and therefore raise performance standards of Europe’s data centres, is enormous.

We plan to track developments of this group as it gains momentum. If you are a member of any of the five organisations involved, let us know what you think about this development.

About the industry bodies involved

Comités des Exploitants de Salles Informatiques et Telecom (CESIT) is an association for operators of computer rooms and telecommunications. It supports members to establish think tanks, labor, exchange and communication from third parties on Data Centre and Telecom Centre topics. CESIT also develops professional capabilities of the sector.

eco has more than 800 member organisations and is the largest Internet industry association in Europe. It was established in 1995 and has has been instrumental in the development of the Internet in Germany, fostering new technologies, infrastructures and markets, and forming framework conditions. Specialists and decision makers of the Internet industry are represented in the Competence Network. Current and future Internet themes are driven forward together with a team of more than 60 eco staff.

The Dutch Datacenter Association connects the market-leading datacenters in the Netherlands to strengthen economic growth of the industry and drive awareness of datacenters in Dutch society. It drives awareness of the industry towards stakeholders such as government, the media and society at large by expressing the views of the industry with regard to regulation and policy issues. It promotes the image and the economic importance of the datacenter industry in the short and long runs. It also leads by facilitating members to boost operational improvements in the form of best practices, promotion of education and contributing to technical standards with which the datacenter industry in Netherlands and beyond.

Host in Ireland is an industry-led marketing initiative that provides timely and accurate information on Ireland’s digital asset hosting ecosystem at all times including demonstrating why Ireland is more cost effective, efficient, reliable, secure and accessible than most other regions across the EU.

techUK represents the companies and technologies that are “defining today the world that we will live in tomorrow”. Membership comprises more than 850 companies that collectively employ approximately 700,000 people, about half of all tech sector jobs in the UK. These companies range from leading FTSE 100 companies to new innovative start-ups.techUK is committed to helping its members grow, by developing markets, developing relationships and networks, reducing business costs and reducing business risks.